Market Orientation

Marketing orientation implies the marketing concept of the company. It indicates an approach that focuses on identifying the visible and hidden needs of the customers. With the increasing trend of globalization the idea of market orientation has gained more prominence in the business world. Here a company tries to develop a product suiting its customer’s needs and they introduce a few changes in the products and services to make it more compatible for the client’s. With an increasingly global economy and more and more choices for consumers, companies must be willing to adapt their market orientation to stay competitive. They are coming forward with tailor made products to please the customers and fulfill their demand in most effective way.

Marketing orientation defines a whole marketing concept. It is not related to customers and sales alone but it requires full support of the organization. Many organizations have implemented a few changes in their organization’s culture to make marketing orientation more successful and an easy affair.

Market orientation is the implementation of the marketing concept. Being marketing oriented is more than just being customer-led. It requires the full support of the organization to be fully implemented in the long term and, indeed, may need a complete change in an organization’s culture. Market orientation is usually defined as the organization’s wide generation, dissemination, and responds to market intelligence.

Popular brands like Apple, Sony, Nokia are successful all around the world. Media professionals talked at length about the success stories of these brands and how they have ruled domestic as well as international market with equal supremacy. To beat the competitors in the global market one has to follow the flexible marketing approach. Your role and success in the global market largely depends on the overall vision and mission of the organization. It is not just the brand images that win appreciation in the global market but the dynamics and the cultural aspect that are the powerful underlying forces behind these brands that are rarely talked about.

The concept of market orientation is laid on three stepping stones these are:

Customer focus

Coordinated marketing and

Profitability

A proper concentration on these three above mentioned concepts could help a company in building a strong philosophy and increase the company’s strategic competence.

These three pillars of market orientation have proven to allow companies to create a very strong philosophy and in turn contribute to the companies’ long term strategic competence.

The trend of globalization, exploring new marketing avenues and the want to remain ahead of the competitors are motivating companies to follow marketing orientation. The availability of updated information, customer database helps companies in planning its market orientation. A market orientation focuses on a wider picture, it not only helps in building marketing strategy depending on the present scenario but it focuses on the future requirement.

Now companies focus on their domestic as well as global clients with great care and tailor made the products to meet the customer’s requirement. Designing a product is not just a physical process but to connect with the customer the product should have cultural compatibility, should be acceptable at social norms and it should not deviate from the set standards followed by the society.

This is the reason companies are now willingly spending a good amount of time and money in analyzing the market and the clients so that they can design compatible products and ensure a bright future of the company.

The big giants of retail industry Marks & Spencer is the latest example who rollback in the competition and market with its marketing orientation strategy and now it is running a huge number of stores in different parts of the world.

Market orientation is also required for Marketing executives who are joining the company. They should also know how their products are marketed and what are their locations, whether they are in a retail showroom or B2B category. The newly joined marketing executive can apply his new ideas on how to increase his or her market share and his or her own contribution.

In the market orientation process the marketing executive also comes to know about the customers whether they are retail customers or institutions. The marketing executive can decide his strategy of marketing to these customers and enhance his or her performance and consequently perhaps the market share of the organization.